


[FIC AND PODFIC] The Only Way Out

by Thimblerig



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode Tag: MAG 179 Accomplice, F/F, Fairy Tale Elements, Fic and Podfic, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Addiction, Mild Gore, Podfic, Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes, Tea, The Magnus Archives Is Its Own Warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:26:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26812111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: Basira is good at not feeling things in a crisis.
Relationships: Basira Hussain & Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	1. it's not good to be alone

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Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zdsu2hiKXgxrTLphG26i2i4I2j08o0GC/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) 

* * *

_\- I’m sorry it had to work out like this._

_\- I’m not._

  
  


Martin tries, one more time, to get her to come with them. 

“It’s not _good,_ to be alone out here,” he says.

Basira studies him. He hovers in one of the steel-frame doorways, curly hair growing long and shapeless over his ears. His eyes are as adamant as diamonds behind the cracked glass of his spectacles. “Daisy was right,” she says.

Martin draws in a breath and looks mulish. Fair enough. But Basira says it straight for once. “If she’d shot your boy in the woods way back when, then this - ” she waves her hand around the furnace room, the cracked roof that shows a sky weeping blood, the chilly desolation outside “ - none of this would of happened. And she’d be alive.”

“Basira -”

“But I asked her to stop.”

Behind Martin, in the shadows of the long corridor the Archivist is standing silently, his eyes - as Basira’s Welsh grandmother used to say - like two pissholes in snow.

“So I need you two to start walking, yeah?”

They walk.

-

Basira is good at not feeling things in a crisis. She does what she’s good at, and assesses the situation.

It is a great beast that lies cooling on the rough steel floor and scattered coal, high as Basira’s head when it stood on all fours, with coarse bristled fur dappling in spots and stripes from its massive shoulders down over its spine and narrow hips, its sinewy legs. Impassively she counts the great claws for rending, the ivory fangs for tearing, the eyes set close together to see ahead and the sensitive, swivelling ears to listen behind. The bloody hole in its forehead.

She thinks about how warm that bristled fur must have been in the desolation wind, and how tough against the cuts and bruises of the world. The fearsomeness of its visage must have scared away a lot of trouble.

The only sounds are the wind in the walls and the dying fires. She is alone.

Muttering nothing in particular, she kicks and shoves and shoulders the great beast until it is lying on its back. It is heavy but loose, its limbs not yet gripped in death’s rigour. Soon enough she has it lying with its head arched back, revealing the delicacy of the throat and its soft, tender belly.

Basira stares at it for a long moment. Then she pulls a knife from her boot and starts to cut.


	2. the belly of the beast

The skin pulls away neatly, with little blood. Basira slips her blade delicately along the skin, easing it down the underside of the monster’s chin, its throat, the arching braces of its ribcage. She goes even slower when she gets to the belly, peeling back layers of hide and muscle until she finds the sac of the stomach. She opens that, too.

There is a woman curled up inside. Fair-haired, stocky. Her bleak blue eyes stare upwards at the ceiling, unmoving. Basira strokes her forehead briefly with her thumb before peeling the rest of the stomach-lining away. She notes the slow, steady movements of Daisy Tonner’s chest before turning away to wash her hands with a little precious clean water.

Opening her pack, she kneels by the monster and sets up a tiny stove made up of a white wax candle and a terracotta flower pot, overturned. She puts a tin mug on top of that, with more clean water, a rare handful of tea leaves, the last of her sugar.

Basira watches the water heat, tiny bubbles forming in the clear liquid.

“What… big… eyes… you have,” Daisy rasps, her voice low, and rough, and torn.

“Not your Nanna.”

“... No.”

“I shot you.”

Daisy’s eyes don’t move from the ceiling. “Asked you... to.”

“You let me. Looked right at me so I could shoot between the eyes."

Silence.

Then, “You asked me to stop.”

Basira looks down at the heating water. “I did.”

“You... really hoped you could just… cut me out of its belly?”

“I don’t do ‘hope’, me,” says Basira. “Never did. There just... there has to be something _better_ than one more execution on the production line. That’s all.”

Daisy digests that. Her eyes blink slowly closed and open, once, twice.

“There’s tea,” Basira says, “if you’re ready to get out.”

Daisy thinks it over. “I can’t hear the Hunt so well. A little. Thumping in the blood.”

“Don’t think that’s ever gonna really leave you.”

Daisy’s head turns, finally, to meet Basira’s eyes. “You’d have to… ask me to stop, if I fall again.”

“‘Slong as you keep trying,” says Basira. “Partners, aren’t we.” She offers her hand, and slowly Daisy takes it.

“Cold,” she says when she has tumbled onto the rough floor of the furnace, bare and skinless.

“That’s what the tea’s for, you nit.”

As a strong woman leans against her side and drinks in the warm liquid, Basira keeps watch.

_the only way out is through_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think that I am not, temperamentally, a fan of horror stories, because the repetitive despair of this latest season has really been getting to me.
> 
> And, while bleakness and despair and horror are undeniable parts of life, they are far from the whole story.
> 
> If this fic meant anything to you, can you do me a solid and smile at your neighbour? Or donate to a foodbank. Grow some flowers. Remember, when someone falls off the wagon and it's all fucking painful and horrible, that that is not the sum of their existence. Tell someone you love, that you love them. Take a minute to flip Despair the finger...


	3. listen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it intimidating to create a podfic based on content that is _entirely voice-based?_
> 
> No, uh no, not at all. 
> 
> *cough*

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Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zdsu2hiKXgxrTLphG26i2i4I2j08o0GC/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) 

* * *

Format: MP3  
Length: 8.54  
Size: 9.05 MB

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Programs Used: Audio Evolution (Mobile); Logopit Plus; Music Editor
> 
> Cover Image: Pixabay stock images
> 
> Music/FX:
> 
> “furnace” by sforsman - https://freesound.org/people/sforsman/sounds/381994/ (CC BY 3.0)  
> “viento fuego” by primisteka - https://freesound.org/people/primisteka/sounds/395660/ (CC BY 3.0)  
> “Harp Melody 9” by luckylittleraven - https://freesound.org/people/luckylittleraven/sounds/415394/ (CC 0)  
> “Harp Melody 10” by luckylittleraven - https://freesound.org/people/luckylittleraven/sounds/415388/ (CC 0)  
> // Recorder notes that the instrument is a Swar SanGam


End file.
